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• Prices start at $25,490 for the five door and $23,990 for the Xsara Coupe.
• New exterior styling provides strong visual impact and added night visibility
• Two new engines with more performance, better fuel economy and lower emissions
• New fuzzy logic adaptive automatic gearbox and new equipment levels and equipment features.

Citroën’s new Xsara five door will go on sale in late February with a new range clearly focused on comfort and luxury and with prices starting at $25,490.

“With the arrival of the Xsara Coupe to provide the performance versions of the Xsara, we have been able to clearly focus the five door version on luxury and comfort,” says Miles Williams, General Manager for Citroën in Australia. “The new five door boasts a range of new features, from new refined engines to redesigned seats for added comfort. With the Coupe VTS providing the performance version in the range, the 2.0 litre version of Xsara five door is now automatic only with a new 102 kW engine providing effortless performance.”

With its bold new front and strong new tail treatment, the new Citroën Xsara five door is instantly recognizable and brings a new level of style to the Xsara that matches the changes that have been made under the skin to further enhance the Xsara’s reputation for cosseting its occupants.

The Xsara boasts two new engines with above class average out puts of 83 and 102 kW and a new automatic gearbox that uses the latest fuzzy logic adaptive technology. Conventional electrics have been ousted by the computer based multiplex system that both simplifies and speeds servicing and maintenance and enables the Xsara to offer a wider range of standard and optional electrical equipment and features.

Already a by word for ride, handling and road holding, the 2001 Xsara’s on road abilities have been further enhanced with a wider track front and rear and the adoption of the 15 inch wheels. Even the stylish new teardrop headlights boast a practical advance for the Xsara. On both low and high beam they offer 20 per cent more light than their predecessors.

The 2001 Citroën Xsara five-door range consists of three versions, all with five doors and with a choice of both a five-speed manual and four-speed automatic gearbox mated to the new 1.6 litre 83 kW engine or the 2.0 litre 102 kW unit with the automatic gearbox as standard.

“The Citroën Xsara was already a benchmark car in its class,” says Miles Williams, General Manager for Citroën in Australia. “These host of changes enable the Xsara to match its competitors not just in looks, but also feature for feature and to further extend its enviable magic carpet ride quality reputation. We expect it to gain many new converts to Citroën in Australia.”

A new exterior style for the Citroën Xsara

The Citroën Xsara is the latest model in the Citroën range to benefit from the new styling spirit at the French car maker that has already produced some of the most exciting cars to come out of Europe in the past few years. Like its stable mates, the Citroën Xsara Picasso and the newly launched Citroën C5, a new level of prominence is given to headlights and the famous Citroën Chevron badge.

The new tear drop headlights amply demonstrate the substantial advances that have been made in headlight design in recent years. Not only do the polycarbonate lens allow a much larger free form shape that blends into the overall shape of the Xsara and to contribute to its new look, they are also substantially better at doing their job. On both dip and full beam they offer 20 per cent more light and this light is also more tightly controlled.

Between the new headlights is the enlarged grilled with its substantially more prominent Chevron badges. The new front treatment produced by the combination of the grille and headlight flow into new lines on the bonnet and the front guards. The front bumper has been reprofiled to blend into the new styling and even the seals around the windscreen have been slimmed to blend with the new Xsara’s restyle. However, they still do their job of catching water from the windscreen and guiding it away from the side windows. The front is completed by the removal of the aerial to the rear of the car.

From the rear, the Citroën Chevrons again play a substantial role in the revised appearance of the Xsara. Not only are they larger, they also blend into the rear panel that frames them for greater prominence. The push button opening for the boot has been replaced by handle that is styled into the rear hatch, while the lock itself has been replaced by an electronic unit that allows remote opening of the rear hatch, that locks automatically at 20 kmh.

Citroën Xsara:The new engines

The Citroën Xsara is now powered by two state of the art 16 valve petrol engines that offer, with 83 kW from the 1.6 litre unit and 102 kW from the 2.0 litre engine, above class average power outputs. This provides the Xsara with a level of performance that all but puts its in the hot hatch bracket.

The new 1.6 litre engine, which is both lighter and more powerful than the 1.6 litre engine it replaces, is anything but a poverty pack entry level unit. It thrusts the Xsara to 100 kmh in a very respectable 11.0 seconds and, where law permits, takes it on to a top speed of 195 kmh.

This has been achieved by a number of changes to the TU5J4 engine, including reprofiling the inlet and exhaust manifold and increasing the size of the inlet valves. The engine has been fitted with state of the art sequential fuel injection and it is controlled by a fly-by-wire electronic throttle. But it’s not all about performance. The new engine is also cleaner than the unit it replaces and easier to service. For example the catalyst has been moved closer to the engine so that it warms up more quickly and, therefore becomes fully functional after shorter distances. It is also now possible to change the oil filter – which is also recyclable – without draining the oil.

With an output of 102 kW, the new EW10J4 engine is unusually powerful in its class and this produces a quick 0-100 kmh time of 9.6 seconds and a top speed of 210 kmh, performance figures that would have put this family five door in the hot hatch class just a few years back. This advanced 16 valve unit has seen a number of changes to prepare it for installation in the 2001 Citroën Xsara.

It has been on a fat fighting campaign to reduce weight, with grams carved off the cylinder block, crankshaft and pistons and, at the same time, it has been made more muscular by reducing the internal friction in the engine and made able to breath more fully with a re-profiled combustion chamber and air intake.

Again this engine is not just about more performance. It is more economical than the engine it replaces and it has lower emissions. Catalyst warm-up is speeded by an injector in the exhaust pipe that pre-heats the emissions equipment on cold start-up, while a redesigned manifold has also been design for quick re-heat.

The Citroën Xsara:The revised suspension

Citroën enjoys an unrivalled reputation for suspension design, both in high technology systems, such as the Citroën C5’s third generation Hydractive suspension and, as in the case of the Xsara, taking a seemingly basic system and refining and honing to point where its performance defies its basic specification.

It is the combination of the magic carpet ride that is so ideally suited to Australian conditions with a level of steering and chassis responsiveness that puts the Xsara firmly in a sports hatch category.

With the 2001 Xsara, its position as the benchmark has been further enhanced by increasing the track by 10 mm at the front and 12 mm at the rear and fitting 15 inch wheels to all models. This has enabled the MacPherson Strut/Torsion beam with passive rear steer system employed by the Xsara to offer higher levels of stability and an even more fluid ride.

The 2001 Citroën Xsara:ABS Brakes with EBD

To the substantial benefits of fifth generation ABS brakes, Citroën have added electronic brake force distribution, as standard on the Coupe VTS and an option on other models. This feature makes the brakes fitted to the Xsara even more powerful as it enables them to adjust automatically and instantaneously to achieve the maximum braking for each wheel. For example if, under braking, one wheel hits gravel, braking is reducing on that wheel and increasing on the wheels with greater grip. This has the dual function of maintaining direction stability and reducing stopping distance over a non-EBD equipped car.

The new Citroën Xsara:Multiplex electrics

The quantity and quality of electrical components in cars has hugely increased over the last 40 years, yet, since cars switched from six to 12 volts, the basic design of automotive electrical systems has not changed. Essentially all cars have a central power source from which power is sent to individual items around the car. This has lead to extremely complex wiring looms that are Byzantine and expensive to maintain and difficult to service and fault find.

The new Citroën Xsara completely does away with the conventional wiring system and replaces it with a computer based multiplex system. Instead of hundreds, if not thousands of wires running through a car, there are at its most basic form, two wires. One is a power supply, like a ring main in a house, the other is a cable carrying instructions from the central computer, the Built-in Systems Interface (BSI) to switches around the car that turn electrical items on and off.

The advantages of the system are manifold. Firstly the new Xsara has, despite having more electrical equipment in it, more than 30 per cent less wiring, cutting cost and weight. As a computer based system with all the components ‘talking’ to each other, rather than being a passive system, servicing and faulting find times are slashed. It is possible for the Citroën service computer to check the health of every electrical component on the car in seconds and inform the technician of any work that is required.